


Small Creatures Such As We

by lyricalnights



Category: Alan Mendelsohn Boy From Mars - Pinkwater
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:55:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricalnights/pseuds/lyricalnights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alan and Leonard, Intergalactic Adventurers</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Creatures Such As We

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wren Truesong (waywren)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywren/gifts).



"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." Carl Sagan

When Leonard Neeble was twelve years old, he met a boy from Mars. He didn't know it at the time, of course, though Alan had come right out and said it. "Did you know that I was a Martian?" But Leonard hadn't actually believed him. Not then. But after the Omega Meter and Klugarsh Mind Control, Hyperstellar Archaeology and Clarence Yojimbo, the not-so-lost continent of Waka-Waka and the Bermuda Triangle Chili Parlor, things looked a little different to Leonard. A message from Alan Mendelsohn, inviting him to spend his summer vacation on Mars, seemed not only normal but natural. Exciting.

 

When Leonard Neeble was thirteen, he went to Mars. He told his parents he would be spending his summer vacation in The Bronx. They asked if he was sure he wanted to miss a full summer of barbecue dinners, gave him some money for souvenirs, and asked him to call once a week. He threw some clothes into a bag, knowing they would look wrinkled as soon as he put them on anyway, and reminded his parents to feed Melvin. Hitching a ride to Mars was surprisingly simple, once Rolzup had explained that the brass potato from the moon was actually a kind of interstellar homing beacon. Discovering that Alan must have known and planned for him to come visit all along made Leonard smile. Space travel made him terribly nauseated, so they spent most of that summer bumming around Mars, with Alan showing Leonard the Martians' domed cities painted to look like craters (muttering something about cameras and perspective) and the warehouse where the Martian High Commission kept all the spacecraft they had collected from their planet's atmosphere. When he was feeling better, Leonard showed Alan how to do yoga, which was especially fun in the lower Martian gravity.

 

When Leonard Neeble was fourteen, he arrived on Mars to discover that Alan had signed them up for a field trip to Capella. Even though Leonard had spent the previous summer surrounded by Martians and had personally met at least one Venusian, it had never occurred to him that this was the tip of the iceberg as far as life among the stars went. At least Martians wore clothes, if odd ones. The Capellans had built their space station habitats to suit their own internal temperatures, and thus wore no clothes at all. Alan informed him of this on the ride over, and Leonard spent the entire time worrying about where he was and wasn't supposed to look. When he walked onto the station and discovered that Capellans really did go around nude but were also three feet tall and wrinkly all over like elephants or the Old One, so you couldn't see anything embarrassing anyway, he belted Alan in the arm and promised never to speak to him again. That lasted until he found out that Capellans also propel themselves around using harnessed methane gas, which wasn't quite the same thing as travelling by fart, but was close enough.

 

When Leonard Neeble was fifteen, he really did go to The Bronx. He and Alan met there before setting off on a trip to visit as many Interplanar Contact locations as they could reach, for the fun of it. They took a bus from The Bronx to the meteor crater in Canada, which turned out to be a complete bust; achieving state twenty-six only took them to a plane of existence where everyone had three heads and smelled like old cheese. Possibly there were great secrets of the ages available there, but neither boy could hold his breath long enough to find any out. After that, they hopscotched through Europe, touching down in Scotland, Switzerland, Poland and Estonia before ending up in Bulgaria, where they had to exit state twenty-six so quickly that they scared a young librarian into fleeing the building and Leonard pulled a muscle in his neck, yoga notwithstanding. They couldn't have known that the people of Nerwyaw were looking for a new king, nor that they considered green sweaters to be a mark of royalty. Still, Alan didn't put up much of a fight when Leonard said he'd really like to go back to Hogboro now.

 

When Leonard Neeble was sixteen, he noticed that Alan seemed more subdued than usual. Normally Leonard had to hustle to keep up with him, bouncing from place to place and thought to thought like a slightly wrinkled intergalactic pinball. But this summer, Alan often slipped away for hours on end, leaving Leonard to amuse himself (and quite a few Martians) by trying out new yoga positions in the antigravity chambers. He finally asked Alan if he had a Martian girlfriend or something, and if he wanted Leonard to leave so he could hang out with her instead, but Alan just sighed and shook his head like Leonard had the density of Plutonium. On the day before he had to leave, Alan invited him to watch a meteor shower, and while Leonard stared into the atmosphere looking for streaking lights, Alan leaned over and kissed him. It was sloppy and a bit wet, which was all Leonard had time to process before Alan was up and inside the nearest dome, leaving him sitting there looking like a Waka-Wakian drinking fleegix. When he left the next day, neither met the other's eyes, and there were no plans made for the following summer.

 

When Leonard Neeble was seventeen, he graduated early from high school. The next morning, he woke up early. He packed a bag, not noticeably more carefully than he had at thirteen, and left his parents a note. It said "I've decided to skip college for now. Alan and I have a lot of exploring to do. I'm taking Melvin along. I'll call when I can." Then he walked outside and activated the brass potato. Leonard knew it might be years before he came back to this house, to this planet. But he wasn't worried. He knew exactly where he belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the astronomy in this story is nonsense. But Mars really does have meteor showers, and the exploration of Mars really is marked by an exceptionally high number of equipment failures and disappearances.
> 
> This story is exactly 1000 words long, four double drabbles and two singles. I thought Alan would like that.


End file.
